


the words she knows (the tune she hums)

by the_judgmentalist



Category: The Office (US)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 05:36:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15901947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_judgmentalist/pseuds/the_judgmentalist
Summary: Pam and Jim through seasons two, three, and four, if Jim was a butch lesbian and Pam were even more confused than we knew her.





	the words she knows (the tune she hums)

She knew Michael would ask her where her Dundies were.

"I don't know what to tell him. I take them to Goodwill usually. I think I have one in my bathroom as a joke."

Pam smiled. "Just tell him they're at home. He'll only want to show them to the camera."

"Right, well, where are yours?"

"You mean the ones honoring the length of my engagement?" Pam asks. A terse smile. "Roy doesn't know, but I'm saving them to be centerpieces on the tables at our wedding reception," she grinned.

Jim feigns a smile. Sure, maybe she wishes Roy were out of the picture. Maybe she wishes marriage were a thing she could legally foresee in her future. Either way, bummer of a topic.

"Fat Halpert! Jim Halpert!" Michael yells as he comes up behind them. Jim twists at the knot on her tie. She always removes it before running errands after work. Somehow it feels safer here among the open floor plan of Dunder Mifflen Scranton. More so than it does at the grocery after work, the mechanic, the movie rental place, Pizza by Alfredo, the doctor's office, anywhere she'd tried to wear it after work. She had never worn a tie up until Dunder Mifflin then slowly worked it into her wardrobe during the past year after a particularly nice comment from Pam the first time she snuck a tie under her sweater. "Ooh, nice tie, Professor," Pam had said. Jim had been stricken dumb, a rare occurrence.

Michael is taking the film crew on a tour of "Past Dundie Winners," starting with Jim. She trails after him to her desk. "I can't," Jim says when Michael prompts her to show her Dundies to the camera. "I don't want to get cocky."

Pam snorts behind her desk.

"That's a good idea," Michael says. Humility never ceases to be a foreign concept to him.

"Mine are at home in a display case above my bed," Dwight chimes in. Jim cringes, like she does every time she has to think of Dwight outside of work.

"TMI! TMI my friend!" Michael cries, and Jim is the first to agree. The less known about Dwight's post-work beet farm life, the better.

Stanley is less than willing to talk to Michael about his Dundies. Jim and Pam share a smile while Michael interrogates him.

*****

Pam is really trying not to dwell on what she's seeing. This is the third Dundies recording on VHS that she's watched for Michael this afternoon, and the third time attention has been drawn specifically to the length of her engagement. Knowing that tonight will be the fourth time is not helping. She's trying not to feel like it's such a big deal. At least she's engaged, she thinks.

"Michael wants me to watch these and find the highlights from past Dundie Awards." As if there were ever any highlights outside of the cheesy skillet being particularly good one year.

She sees Michael creeping up on her on-screen, singing a butchered version of "Mambo No. 5" about the women in the office. Jim is at the table next to her, in frame, deep in conversation. She notices that Jim's hair is curlier here on tape than it is now in the present. Kevin sits in front of the camcorder.

She looks out into the office and catches Jim's eyes. They share a laugh, and she loses herself in it just long enough to forget that she caught Jim flat-out staring at he just now, and she definitely doesn't have time to think about what that could mean.

She watches a clip of Roy accepting their Dundie for longest engagement. Michael asks if Roy has any words, and he says, "see you next year." Pam tries to ignore the way Roy treats their relationship like a joke, and wonders, like Michael, when will that girl get married?

******

JIm has been to her share of Dundie Awards, but usually doesn't sit with Pam because the receptionist always sits with her fiancee. Roy, for some reason, is more irritable this year than usual. Well, Jim isn't surprised. She's come to suspect the worst out of the guy, and not just because she wishes she were in his place. She's big enough to acknowledge that fact. But even if she were just a work acquaintance of Pam's, even if she were Angela, she wouldn't be a fan of Roy. He doesn't enjoy fun, doesn't even feign enthusiasm for any of Pam's interests. Pam deserves better, she thinks, no matter which way you look at it. Even if she isn't into girls, she deserves a man willing to bet the farm on her. Jim feels that way. She can't imagine living in Scranton all of her life, but the thought of Pam by her side? That makes it bearable. Any other way and it's an unimaginable future. Amazing the color one person can add to her future plans. A whole unbearable mess of a town becomes a dream with just one particular person by her side. It's a nice thought, altogether, but Jim doesn't want to think about it too deeply.

But as she watches Pam follow Roy out the door, shortly after Michael reveals that the company can't cover food costs that year, she feels like her hope is TKO'd. 

*****

Pam would usually follow Roy home, follow him into a damp cave if it meant she wouldn't cause waves. But tonight is different. She thinks back to Roy jokingly accepting their Longest Engagement Dundie from the tape of last year's awards ceremony. "Any words?" Michael prods. "Uh, see you next year!" Roy laughs. Smiles charmingly. Who is he trying to impress? she thinks, as she pushes past him and his pick-up truck that smells like stale french fries. The idea of Jim's face, smiling at her over a plate of Chicken Crispers, a shared Awesome Blossom? Seems worth it.

*****

She comes back just in time for Ping, sits down across from Jim. The cringe factor of Michael in those glasses, mixing L's and R's as Ping, and the intensity of jim's concerned eyes makes her want a drink. So she orders one. And then another. And then takes a few off of Stanley's table. And then lets all the drinks melt into Second Drink (she's trademarking that one) and slurps it down, watching Jim smile at the drinking tradition she's just developed, even if she doesn't join.

Later, some jackass who's spending his Tuesday's at a Chili's for something other than an office party (Lame, she thinks) mock Michael. He goes to end the Dundies early, and Pam starts the chant to encourage him to go on with the ceremony. Jim joins in. Pam normally wouldn't be this sappy, but she enjoys the camaraderie they always share in the office. It's nice to depend on at least one person in her life, to trust that someone will act a certain way because they trust her. Well, other than her mom. But her mom doesn't work here.

Stanley receives the Fine Work Award after all the cheering she and Jim star to keep the ceremony going. She likes that Jim seems to care enough about Michael, deep-down, to not want to see him hurt. 

She feels her pulse spike as Michael announces that the next award is for her. "I think we all know what award Pam is gonna be getting this year!" he grins. Pam gulps right into the camera.

"It's the whitest sneakers award!" Michael cries. "Because Pam always has the whitest sneakers on!" Pam is lost at this point, giggling and covering her mouth, too overcome to even say anything to Jim. She sprints up to the mic.

"I have so many people to thank for this award!' she says, before launching into a list of gratitude, directed at her Keds, Michael, Dwight, and God, who she can swear she feels in this Chili's tonight. She doesn't directly thank Jim for her nice Keds, but she knows that she secretly owes the most impressive parts of her wardrobe to the small part of herself that dresses to impress Jim. Even if she won't admit it to herself. It's not like she started dressing nice because of Jim; rather that she'd taken a steep decline in daily compliments until Jim arrived in the office, and since then, she can remember at least one compliment a day for her outfit, her shoes, her choice of morning snack, her opinion on a recent film release... whatever she and Jim may end up discussing. It always keeps work - well, life in general - interesting. Nothing has been quite as surprising as the realization that she may feel for Jim something she'd never felt before. Like, it's fine. It's probably nothing. But after three months of freaking out, inspired by some very specific anxieties related to Jim's flirtation with the purse sales girl, Katie, she'd decided to acknowledge what she felt for Jim was a cute workplace flirtation, probably inspired by the minor attraction she'd always felt for various women but never acted on, due to her early and intense attachment to Roy. It wasn't like she'd gotten a chance to play Spin the Bottle with some cute girl from high school; she'd been engaged to Roy since she was 19, and any kind of attraction to women was easy to ignore when acting on it meant being ostracized to the utmost degree. 

"Woo!" she squealed. She did a Superstar-esque reach for the sky, both arms out-stretched. "Yeah-uh!" she yelled. She flung those arms around Jim's neck as she approached, carefree and positive about her friendship with the girl. It was one of the best things in her life, currently. She planted one on Jim's lips, something she'd thought about since that time she'd helped Jim make a sale a few months ago. She'd found out while huddled around Pam's messaging machine after-hours, beamed and threw her arms around Pam, picked her up and swung her around. If Pam were an idiot, she would've kissed Jim then and there. She didn't, it felt too weighty then. But now, with the strength of three margaritas behind her, it made a lot of sense. She noticed the pinkness in Jim's cheeks as she pulled away, but otherwise it seemed like she'd gotten away with it. She sat across from her at their two-top table and grinned at her luck. No award about her engagement and here was Jim, across from her, no Roy in sight, and Jim's hair, grown longer, curled around the neck of her button-up. Pam briefly wondered what it would smell like beneath Jim's hair, the sweat its weight had created on her neck. What would the skin joining her shoulder and neck smell like if Pam pulled her hair away and pressed her nose, her lips, there? What a ridiculous thought. She forced herself to remember the burn of Roy's chin whiskers against her neck.

*****

"What a great year for the Dundies!" Jim said into the camera as she slowly bit away at a peanut she'd unshelled.

She could see Pam staring at her, intently, out of the corner of her eye. She was drunk, it made sense that she'd be so hyper-focused on something so random.

"And we heard Michael change the lyrics to a number of classic songs," Jim said, as Michael sang some unholy version of "I Had the Time of My Life" in the background. "Which, for me, has ruined them for life." Jim noticed Pam staring at her.

"...and I owe it all to yoooouuu!" sang Jennifer Warnes in the background. Jim thought, vaguely in the furtherest corners of her mind, of wearing a black t-shirt and lifting Pam above her head, "Dirty Dancing" style, while Roy looked on in jealousy.

"What?" she said, noticing the intense stare Pam and fixed on her. Pam smiled, enough for Jim to feel her knees quake, then fell off of her barstool.

"Oh my god!" Jim cried, rushing to help a giggling Pam to her feet. It wasn't fair that drunk Pam, on the floor, while unfamiliar, was about the cutest thing Jim had ever seen. It was like God created an adorable Hallmark card just for her.

"Did you get that?!" Jim asked the camera man, beaming, while Pam laughed bodily from the floor. Jim knew this was something Roy and his uptight demeanor would never see or appreciate from Pam, and that made the moment that much sweeter.

*****

"Oh my god! I just want to say that this was the best! Dundies! EVER! WOOOOO!" Pam yelled into the camera outside of the Chili's as they left. The Dundies were over. Jim only had a few seconds to pretend that Pam was hers before Angela drove the receptionist home to her fiancé. Jim laughed as she tried to keep her from making a bigger fool out of herself.

"Hey... can I ask you a question?" Pam said as Jim deposited her into Angela's car for the ride home.

"Shoot."

Pam looked at the camera, as if just realizing it was there. " I just wanna say... thanks."

Jim grinned. "Not really a question," she said. She helped Pam into the passenger seat of Angela's sedan, opening the door, wishing her a good night, grinning. She felt like the gentlemanly date she'd always wanted to be for a girl like Pam. The kind of companion she deserved. "Thank you Angela," she said, shutting the door, She watched them drive off, away from the magic of that Chili's parking lot.

Jim listened to Elton John's Greatest Hits on her iPod on the way home. "Hold me closer, Tiny Dancer." She pictured Pam in her Keds, standing on the toes of Jim's leather work Oxford's, dancing slowly to soft hits of the 70s in a darkened Chili's.

**Author's Note:**

> The Jim in my stories is about the same; she has two older brothers, and her parents expected her to be a boy as well, hence the name Jim. Her full name is Jemima, and her parents just didn't have a back-up plan.
> 
> I've always thought Jim seemed too nice, considerate, and devoted to Pam to be an actual cis man. So I decided to view him/her as a lesbian (butch, specifically) and so far it seems to fit well. Here's the story as I would've written it.


End file.
